Saturday, August 27

I think I have only ever visited Stockport once in my life, sometime during my teenage years. Challenged with the task of going somewhere we had never been, I suggested a Merseyrail trip from James Street (a three minute walk from the apartment) to Southport. The ride took about an hour and took us past a lot of places that we had visited on our previous trips. Port Sunlight and so on.

We walked out of the station onto a pedestrianised high street where, almost immediately, an earnest–looking local gave us a free copy of The Light newspaper, about which I will have much more to say elsewhere.

We walked down to the sea and came across a fantastic bookshop of the kind you only see when you least expect it. It had five floors of secondhand books along with a huge collection of seashells and genuinely old posters.

From there we walk down to the beach and onto the pier. To our surprise the appear seems to start and continue over land. We pass a big beer garden where an Elvis impersonator wrestles with the memory of Elvis and loses.

Eventually the pier goes into the sea where the tide has conveniently gone out. I photograph our shadows as we look over the railing at the sand.

Later we will eat large portions of fish and chips at Jacksons Traditional Family Fish Shop.